There are many things keeping electric vehicles from entering the mainstream market today. Chief among those is limited driving range, high cost compared to a traditional vehicle, and hassles from having to plug the car in to charge at home and on the go. Electric vehicles will certainly get cheaper over the years as the technology matures, and battery breakthroughs will lengthen the driving range.

Now, the U.S. Energy Department is offering up to $4 million to develop wireless chargers for electric vehicles to address concerns with having to plug the vehicle for power. The goal is to develop wireless technology that would transfer power from the electric grid to the vehicle battery packs without the driver having to plug-in. The ability to simply pull into the garage or parking space and have your car automatically recharge would be a huge improvement over systems in place today.

The $4 million in funding is being made available through the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Program. The program believes that by offering wireless charging technology, consumers will be more likely to purchase electric vehicles. The hope is to accelerate the development of wireless charging solutions in the near-term with the funding opportunity.

The Energy Department wants to select as many as four projects for research and development and wireless charging systems that can be integrated into a production vehicle and tested in the real world. The department hopes vehicles using this technology could be on the roads within this decade. Four million dollars doesn't sound like a lot of funding for as many as four projects.

The selections for funding are expected to be announced this summer. The charger will be aimed at operators of light duty electric vehicles primarily focusing on static and possibly quasi-dynamic charging. The program deadline for letters of intent is April 25 with a full application submission deadline set at May 31 of this year.

The point of EVs is to replace oil with a domestic energy source and move emissions away from urban centers.

10% less efficiency has no impact on those goals. The charging is done at times of lowest demand, anyway.

Personally, I think pure EVs are a niche solution, as PHEV is the answer. There, if you forget, you can just run on gas. You can also go on a road trip and aren't tethered to being within X miles from your home. So you don't have to be moron to get one of those...

quote: The point of EVs is to replace oil with a domestic energy source and move emissions away from urban centers.

Nice speech. If by "domestic energy" you mean burning more coal for power and relying on China for batteries, you would be correct. And "moving" emissions from urban air into polluting the urban water table and soil, you would have a point.

By the way this isn't the 1970's. Cars don't really pollute the air anymore, fyi. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, and your push mower puts our more emissions than a modern car.

CO2 has played an enormous role in the development and sustaining of life on Earth. Of course it's not a goddamn pollutant. And if it WAS, why did the EPA wait until Obama gets in office to suddenly discover this "pollutant"? Give me a break, that was 100% political and part of this Administrations agenda.

I couldn't care less whether you think that was some speech. That's their purpose. If they didn't have those attributes, then nobody would bother with EVs.

Stop with this coal nonsense. If you put a million EVs on the road tomorrow, you wouldn't get an ounce more coal burnt, as all new energy will be coming from natural gas (and wind). It's now the cheapest source of energy. They also charge primarily at night, when demand is lowest.

Of course cars still pollute, and no, I'm not talking about CO2. I know push mowers are bad, but you don't have two per household running for 10k miles a year. It's much better than it was in the 50's or 70's, but it's still bad enough for medical associations to pin thousands of deaths per year on air pollution and even more cases of respiratory ailments.